Abstract
Until the last chapter, we were looking rather broadly at the way in which anthropologists observe and make sense of particular societies, the way they try to understand systems of classification and value, and the social relationships into which they enter. In Chapter 6 we began to look at contested ideas about objects and their meaning. It was mentioned at the outset of this book that another important task for anthropologists is the translation back of their findings into their own language and their own system of categories. This is what makes it possible to compare their findings with those of people working elsewhere, or, at least, to present a description capable of comparison with those produced elsewhere.
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References
Durkheim, Emile (1915) The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, trans. J. W. Swain (London: George Allen & Unwin).
Evans-Pritchard, E. E. (1965) Theories of Primitive Religion (Oxford: Clarendon).
Frazer, Sir James George (1922) The Golden Bough; A Study in Magic and Religion, abridged edn (London: Macmillan).
Gombrich, Richard (1971) Precept and Practice: Traditional Buddhism in the Rural Highlands of Ceylon (Oxford: Clarendon).
Leach, Edmund (1969) ‘Genesis as Myth’, in Genesis as Myth and other Essays (London: Cape).
Lévi-Strauss, Claude (1963) ‘The Structural Study of Myth’, in Structural Anthropology (Harmondsworth: Penguin).
Malinowski, Bronislaw (1974) Magic, Science and Religion (London: Free Press).
Middleton, John (1960) Lugbara Religion: Ritual and Authority among an East African People (London: Oxford University Press for the International African Institute).
Ohnuki-Tierney, Emiko (1984) Illness and Culture in Contemporary Japan (Cambridge University Press).
Radcliffe-Brown, A. R. (1964) The Andaman Islanders (New York: Free Press)
Reader, Ian (1996) A Poisonous Cocktail: Aum Shinrikyo’s Path to Violence (Copenhagen: Nordic Institute for Asian Studies).
Tylor, Edward B. (1913) Primitive Culture, Vol. 2, (London: John Murray)
Worsley, Peter (1970) The Trumpet Shall Sound: A Study of ‘Cargo’ Cults in Melanesia (London: Paladin).
Further Reading
Burridge, Kenelm (1960) Mambu: A Melanesian Millennium (London: Methuen).
Lévi-Strauss, Claude (1967) ‘The Myth of Asdiwal’, in Edmund Leach (ed.),The Structural Study of Myth and Totemism (London: Tavistock).
Lindstrom, Lamont (1993) Cargo Cult: Strange Stories of Desire from Melanesia and Beyond (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press).
Morris, Brian (1987) Anthropological Studies of Religion: An Introductory Text (Cambridge University Press).
Tambiah, Stanley Jeyaraja (1990) Magic, science, religion, and the scope of rationality (Cambridge University Press).
Novels
Endo, Shusaku, Silence (London: Peter Owen, 1976), tells the story of two European missionaries whose less than successful work in Japan finds them seeking some sign from God that their work is not in vain.
Hellerman, Tony, Sacred Clowns (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1993) is a murder mystery involving two native American detectives and a sacred festival.
Trollope, Joanna, The Choir (London: Black Swan, 1992) takes the reader into a fictional world of politics, scandal and social relations in a Church of England community.
Films
The Dervishes of Kurdistan (Brian Moser, André Singer and Ali Bulookbashi, 1973) illustrates some of the extraordinary feats people with strong faith are able to perform.
The Kalasha: Rites of Spring (John Sheppard and Peter Parkes, 1990) is another very good ‘Disappearing World’ film about a minority people living in the mountains of Pakistan who resist the surrounding Islamic influence.
Copyright information
© 1999 Joy Hendry
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Hendry, J. (1999). Cosmology I: Religion, Magic and Mythology. In: An Introduction to Social Anthropology. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-27281-5_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-27281-5_8
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